Dead Branches

By Benjamin Langley

When Thomas Tilbrook receives a letter telling him that his estranged father is dying, he realises it's finally time to go back to the Cambridgeshire Fens. But going back evokes memories of the last time he saw his father—memories that he can't entirely trust.

Thomas remembers the summer of 1990 like it was yesterday: long hot days in the sun, watching the World Cup on TV… and his best friend John going missing.

He remembers how the silence of the adults had forced him to investigate what had happened to John with his brother and cousins. After all, who knew the hidden pathways and secrets of a village better than they did? Could it have been the local bogeyman Shaky Jake? Could one of the creatures on his deck of horror cards have been responsible? Could it be the dead tree with the sinister smile that watched him from a nearby field?

…or could the truth be closer to home and far worse than he could ever possibly have imagined?

Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
• Release date: Jul 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223316534

Benjamin Langley

Benjamin Langley lives, writes, & teaches in Cambridgeshire, UK. He studied at Anglia Ruskin University, completing his MA in Creative Writing in 2015. His first novel, Dead Branches was released in 2019. Is She Dead in Your Dreams? is his second novel, released march 2020. Benjamin has had over a dozen pieces of short fiction published, & has written Sherlock Holmes adventures featured in Adventures in the Realm of H.G. Wells, Adventures Beyond the Canon, & Adventures in the Realm of Steampunk. He can be found on twitter @B_J_Langley

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Published by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from The Darkest Depths

Website: www.crystallakepub.com/

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Copyright 2019 Benjamin Langley

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All Rights Reserved

Cover art:

Don Noble—www.roosterrepublicpress.com

Layout:

Kenneth W. Cain—www.kennethwcain.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the authors’ imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

So many people have helped to make this book what it is. It’s a product of many experiences over the years, since my youngest days. I’d like to thank my parents for making me believe that anything is possible, and for feeding my love of horror since the beginning. I mean, how old was I when I was terrified of ‘Stop Boris’, the game in which you had to shoot the giant spider with the laser gun? Was that an appropriate Christmas present? We loved it! Thanks for buying me ‘Scream’ comics, and of course, Horror Top Trumps.

I have fond memories of watching horror movies with my siblings and with my mum and my nan on Saturday nights throughout my childhood (starting with the Hammer House of Horror classics), and that spread to a love of reading horror. We should have known it would come to this!

I couldn’t do this without the support of my wonderful wife, Lisa, and my two girls, Malibu and Georgia. We’ve had some great times together, and you always give me the time I need and the encouragement to develop my writing projects. Lisa, thanks for listening to my ideas, reading my drafts, and helping to make this dream a reality.

Huge thanks to my good friend Michelle Foster who gave me feedback on an earlier version of the novel. (Actually, she swore at me for what I did to one of the characters.) Our regular meetups kept me sane and being able to discuss and plot out ideas with you is so valuable.

Don Noble, thanks for the awesome cover.

An early draft of this novel was part of my MA in Creative writing, so I’d like to that the staff at Anglia Ruskin University, particularly Colette Paul and Una McCormack. Thanks for the great advice, and all the recommended reading. I’ll get through them all one day.

The first words of the novel (long since entirely replaced) were written on a delightful writing retreat at Le Verger in France. David and Michele Lambert are excellent hosts, and the opportunity to write in such a pleasant location really got the wheels turning on this one.

I’d also like to thank everyone who has supported me in my writing and given me encouragement in the writing groups and workshops I’ve attended over the years.

Thank you to Joe and the team at Crystal Lake Publishing for giving this book another chance to find an audience. I appreciate it.

Finally, thanks to all the writers of stories out there that keep us filled with wonder, and all of the readers that are holding a copy of this book—I hope you enjoyed it.

- Benjamin Langley

For the friends we make

when we’re young and innocent

He’s dying.

I read the letter to be sure.

The doctor says he’s only got days left.

What’s wrong, Dad? Charlie’s in front of me, already dressed for school.

Hey, Charlie! I pull him into one of my inescapable bear-hugs. Two months from turning ten, he’s almost the age I was when I last saw my dad.

He squeezes free, proving my bear-hugs fallible, and looks at the letter on the table. Who’s it from? he says, his inquisitive face scrunched up.

I won’t say Charlie takes after me. I was naïve, and he’s a smart lad. But it’s a common misconception that children don’t know what’s going on. Some people forget how curious they were as youngsters and don’t remember that answers like it’s nothing or don’t worry about it encourage curious children to seek their own conclusions. Sometimes the best answers are the ones you find yourself.

It’s from my mother. Your grandmother. I don’t remember the last time I let her see Charlie. It was never her fault, and it’s unfair to keep him from her, but she’s linked to too many bad memories.

Your granddad’s dying.

Charlie nods, but he’s not affected. Had I told him my dad was a bad man? I’m not one for stories–not anymore. Now Charlie’s older, I have to tell him. If I don’t, I’m worse than they were. Mum said they tried to protect us, but what harm would the truth have done? Not telling us was the easy option. And look at the damage it did.

It’s a long time since I thought of that summer. It’s a long time since I thought of Little Mosswick and its network of drove-ways and ditches that were our secret trails around the village. Don’t believe the myth that Fenland folk are somehow special, that they have an affinity with the soil and share some kind of secret knowledge. Don’t believe there’s an inherent goodness in that place.

I found out that wasn’t true in 1990. It should have been a magical summer. The World Cup had just started, and we were young and believed anything was possible. We never knew such terrible things could happen. I made the mistake of believing what my family told me. I made the mistake of believing they’d keep us safe. Do I want to relive that? Perhaps the biggest reason I’d find returning to my childhood home so difficult is that, despite years of running the events through my head, before I locked them away for my own sanity, I’m still not sure of how much of what happened was real. And now, as I study the words that suggest he’s dying, I wonder, can a creature like that even die?

PART ONE

Tuesday, 12th June 1990

Did the silence strike me as odd? Before it all began, every day the chickens clucked so noisily that they could be heard across the yard. But not on that day. The flurry of feathers–soft, white under-feathers–stained red, and drifting on the breeze, alarmed me. Chicken wire jutted out of the henhouse at an ugly angle, twisted and torn away from the wood, and a strong smell, like a well-soiled cat litter tray left to fester in the sun, hung in the air.

Reaching for the door, I felt a lifeless coldness. Heat used to radiate from the coop; its absence chilled me. Turn and run. That was my instinct, back to the comfort of my room, but I’d have to face him, and I couldn’t return empty-handed. Before grabbing the handle, I took a few deep breaths. I didn’t have to open the door far before the remains of a chicken tumbled out, brushing by my leg and falling onto my foot. It appeared intact: head, wings, legs, all there, but then, a bloody chasm. Bits of bone and pink-purplish flesh, still wet, glistened in the early morning sun. I stared at it and felt my gut tighten. What could have caused such carnage? Part of me didn’t want to know but fear more than curiosity made me look.

Inside, blood stained the wooden panels and a layer of chicken carcasses, gore, and feathers hid the straw. Despite the devastation, despite the decimation, it was only when I saw a broken shell and hardening yolk smeared on a nest box, that I panicked. What if I went back without any eggs? Dad’s face, puffy and red, came into my mind and I imagined him muttering useless boy. Then he’d pull on his boots and stamp off, swearing about me under his breath. I needed to find an egg. I swept dismembered birds aside, searching the corner where they often laid. Sticky with half-set egg, shards of eggshell clung to the straw. In the other corner, beside a dead chicken with one wing torn off and no head, something egg-shaped remained. I pulled the mangled bird aside by a cold, hard leg and as suspected, as hoped, found a single, speckled egg. I gathered it and hurried to the house where the smell of melting lard, and the intense heat of the kitchen made my stomach turn. 

You got some? asked Mum.

I held out the palm of my hand, the lone egg, the sole survivor, resting upon it.

Dad glared at me. He scratched at one of his sideburns. One egg? What good is one fucking egg? He sneered as he stared at me, no doubt looking for faults; as always, he found something. What’s that slarred up your top?

I looked at one arm, saw nothing, and then at the other. Streaks of red scarred my school shirt.

You’ve ruined your shirt, boy. You must think I farm money. You must think I pull it out of the earth.

Something’s happened, I said, my voice reduced to a whisper.

Mum dipped a tea towel in the sink and came over. She scrubbed at the blood, causing it to spread further along the sleeve. Whatever is it? she asked.

They’re dead, I said, shaking my arm away from Mum. As I did so, the egg shot out of my hand and smashed onto the tiled floor.

What the hell are you playing at? Dad said rising out of his chair. Seated, he resembled a hulking beast, standing, an absolute behemoth.

I had to make myself understood before I stoked his ire further. They’re dead! I said again.

This time he heard. Who are? His brow furrowed and his eyebrows became one long hairy caterpillar.

The chickens! They’re all dead.

As expected, Dad went over to the door and pulled on his size thirteen boots. Why didn’t you say in the first place?

Go get a fresh shirt, Mum said. I’ll clean this mess.

We both gazed at the egg. The sight of the orange yolk, broken and diluting with the transparent white made me think of the stiff egg yolk in the henhouse and the gored bodies of the hens, and, feeling bile rising in my gut, I dashed through the door.

My older brother, Will, stood on the stairs. What have you done now? he asked with a grin.

I rushed past him, and he turned to follow me back upstairs.

With ragged breath and tears welling, I pulled open a drawer looking for a clean shirt.

Will put his arm around me and guided me to the bed. What’s up?

The tears came with an angry grunt before I blurted out, He’ll say it’s my fault.

What’s your fault?

I sniffed and rubbed at my eyes. The chickens. I took another deep breath as I tried to bring my sobbing under control. They’re all dead.

Will rubbed my back. How can that be your fault? Doesn’t matter what he says, you know it’s not true, I know it’s not true, and Dad knows it’s not true, either. He says stuff like that without thinking.

I took in a deep breath.

You can’t let it get to you.

I wiped the last of my tears from my cheek.

Will moved over to the drawers, pulled out a shirt and tossed it to me. Come on. We don’t want to be late.

I swallowed hard, tasting the snot the sobbing had drawn up. It had passed. Will had done it again. He always knew when I needed him, and how to calm me down. He was eleven, the second oldest at Little Mosswick Primary School, and about the coolest kid I knew. As long as I had him to rely on, I figured I’d always be all right.

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The heat had prickled me all day and left me agitated. With the stench of blood stuck in my nostrils, and the vision of carnage in my mind, concentration failed me at school. After school, nothing changed. I’d started my go on Super Mario Bros. when a knock on the door distracted me. I mistimed my jump and Mario landed in the open mouth of a piranha plant. Will laughed as Mario’s death tune played and he reached for the joypad, but then several rapid bangs drew us out of our bedroom. When we reached the middle step, Mum called my name.

Dad sat at the kitchen table chasing gravy around his plate with a piece of Yorkshire pudding. As usual, a smear of mud remained on his left cheek and he looked grey with stubble. Mum stood near the door, and my friend John’s mum, who always insisted that I call her Barbara rather than Mrs Glover, stepped inside. It felt weird calling adults by their first names. She looked out of place in our kitchen in her red and white supermarket uniform.

She came over to me. Tom. She put her hand on my shoulder, the knuckles red. Have you seen John? A string of saliva hung between her lips.

I shook my head. Not since school.

Did he have any plans? said Barbara.

I shrugged. Had John said anything? With the mood I’d been in, I couldn’t remember. I’d gone home for tea with my cousin, Liam, who had dragged me out of the classroom at the end of the day, and hopped around outside his brother Andy’s classroom, urging him to hurry. Our gang, the Crusaders, consisted of Will, Liam, Andy and me. We used to be called The Muskehounds, but we had argued over who should be Dogtanian, so we changed it. John had been hanging around with us so much that we’d had a secret meeting to discuss whether he should be allowed to be a full-time part of the gang. We’d decided that he could, but we hadn’t told him yet.

Did he leave school on his own? Barbara said. The saliva string broke. 

I don’t know. Sometimes he walks with Chris Jackson.

I’ve been there. She took a huge breath as if she’d forgotten to breathe until that moment.

Did he get home and go out again? asked Dad, glancing up from his dinner plate. Before waiting for a response, he picked up a knife and cut himself a slab of bread.

Barbara’s head dropped, and she stared at the tiles. She was never there when John got home. Her job in the new supermarket in Ely meant John got the house to himself for a couple of hours. He always asked one of us over to play to avoid being alone.

I’m sure he’ll turn up, Mum said. She placed a hand on Barbara’s shoulder. You know what boys are like.

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment Mum was thinking of because we often spent evenings out, reinforcing a hideout or trying to get a raft to float on the river, and then wandered home at dark, but we’d never dare do it on a school night.

Mum gave Barbara a sympathetic nod, her hand lingering on her shoulder. I could never imagine the two of them as friends. Everything about them was different. Mum looked like a proper mum should, but John’s mum looked and acted more like a mum off the TV, with red lipstick and hair that didn’t move. They lived in one of Little Mosswick’s new housing estates that Dad swore so much about when they were built.

I should go, said Barbara. She stepped outside and then turned back at me.

Is there anyone else I could ask?

John didn’t have many friends. He was smart, and he knew it, and people didn’t like that. I shook my head, and she turned away, her shoulders low. As Mum put her hand on the door, I said, Wait, and Barbara turned. Maybe Daniel Richardson? They hang out together sometimes.

Daniel and John were friends, but they’d fallen out when John had lent his imported Nintendo Gameboy to me and not him. Perhaps they’d made up. Perhaps John was over at Daniel’s house trading Panini World Cup stickers. Maybe John was swapping his sticker of the World Cup trophy with Daniel, the sticker I needed to complete my first page. More than anything, if it meant John was okay, I wanted Daniel to have that sticker even if I never completed my collection.

Want us to have a look around? See if he turns up? Dad said without looking up from his plate.

No, I couldn’t ask…

It’s no trouble. I’ll bring him straight home if we find him. Dad rose out of his seat. He wiped his hands on his jumper and I wondered how he could even wear one in the eternal furnace of our kitchen.

If you don’t mind… Thank you. She turned to me, And this other boy, Daniel?

I told Barbara where Daniel lived, and she smiled weakly before hurrying out.

It’s not right leaving kids that age on their own, Dad said, after pushing another piece of bread into his mouth which distorted his voice. Mothers should be home with their children.

He swallowed noisily then reached for his boots and sunk back into the seat to pull them on. Couldn’t leave her in that state. Had to do something.

He stood up and called out, Will!

Will thudded down the stairs and peered around the door frame.

Come walk with me up along the drove to the river bank.

Okay, Will said and fetched his shoes.

You, boy, he said, glaring at me, have a wander around the back field. Take Chappie with you. He needs the exercise.

We named our dog after the brand of food we fed him. We thought we were being original by not calling him Spot or Patch or Rover. A border collie, he had a black coat with a ring of white around his neck and over his shoulders and a patch around his left eye. We got him from the animal shelter. He’d been abandoned, so we didn’t know his age, but in the last year, he’d slowed down. He showed no excitement when I fetched his lead, and he struggled to get to his feet.

Come on, Chappie, I said, trying to muster enthusiasm.

He shook after he stood, and then stared at me with his watery eyes as I put him on the lead.

Our house was a couple of hundred metres from the main road (called Main Street) which ran through Little Mosswick. A series of droves linked the various fields that made up our farm. It had been so dry that the stiff mud on those old routes had cracked and looked like the skin of an ancient dinosaur. Granddad Norman could name all the droves, but I only knew where they led to, or the streets which they crossed. I scanned the drove that led to the river, the one Dad and Will headed down, but I could see no sign as they’d disappeared behind the row of elderberry bushes.

I gave Chappie’s lead a tug. It’s me and you again.

He stopped to sniff the gate post.

How come it’s always Dad and Will, hey Chappie? I dragged him along as I gazed into the ditches on either side that separated the field of oilseed rape, alive with yellow flowers swaying in the breeze, from the field planted with the potato crop. I’d rather be with you, anyway.

I didn’t know why I kept peering into the ditches. Those on the left were bone dry and had dying grass and a few bulrushes withering away in them. The other side contained hundreds of nettles, with a few dock leaves sprouting at the edges. At least if anyone fell in, they’d be able to ease the sting with a rub of the leaves. A rustle came from within the nettles, and I pictured the horrible toad-like creature from the cover of the Fighting Fantasy book I’d been playing: Deathtrap Dungeon. If anything planned to strike, it would have been when I was alone. But John was strong and smart; nothing like that could take him.

I wasn’t scared, but I didn’t want to walk along the ditches anymore. When we reached the entrance to the field, I decided to cut across it.

I let Chappie off his lead and he disappeared beneath the sea of green leaves, and I had to follow the quivering of the plants to tell where he was. Given the size of the plants, I figured it would almost be time to harvest them, but I couldn’t be sure. Dad expected me to know that sort of thing, but I couldn’t keep it in my head. Too busy with silly games and books, he’d say.

I headed towards the back end which was never planted. It was home to a rusting Ford tractor that hadn’t moved in my lifetime. John liked to tinker with machinery, so I thought it worth checking in case he’d wandered over to it.

I kept my eyes on the tractor, avoiding the twisted, oak tree in the back corner. Dead, at some point it had been struck by lightning, perhaps more than once, which had split the top of the trunk in two. It also bore a scorch mark like a gaping mouth, and the wild branches above resembled the hair of an ancient creature or the snakes of Medusa, and where the low branches had been severed it looked like it had stumpy limbs. In recent years, ivy had grown around its base, giving the impression it had returned to life, back from the dead like a zombie.

I’d been scared of the tree ever since Granddad Norman put one of his glass eyes into a knot on the tree’s trunk the day after he told us the story of how he lost his eye. Not long after they bought the land, which hadn’t been farmed since the Miller boys (whoever they were) had been killed during the First World War, my great-granddad wanted that land in use. He gave Granddad Norman, (who was no older than thirteen at the time) and his older brother, Arthur, one day to clear it.

Once, sheds had stood there, but they’d long since collapsed and the beams were left half-buried in the ground. The best method Arthur and Granddad Norman could think of was to drag them out using chains attached to the tractor. They’d almost cleared the entire field, but then they set their sights on the old oak tree which already appeared to be dead. They thought they could pluck it from the ground as easily as those beams that had only been sunk a year or two. They didn’t reckon on the ancient evil that held the cursed oak in place. The tree, smelling blood and relishing the opportunity to do harm, allowed Granddad Norman to tie the chain around its trunk. Arthur started the tractor. The engine roared and the chain dug into the trunk. Granddad swears it bowed and looked ready to tear out of the ground when he heard something ping. The last thing he saw with his left eye was the broken chain flying towards him.

It was for the best, claimed Granddad, because if the tree hadn’t taken his eye, then he would have fought in the Second World War and, like Arthur, he might never have come home.

Wedging his glass eye into one of the tree’s knotholes the day after he told us that story was his worst prank yet. He spied on us from behind the old Ford tractor and slapped the side of his legs, laughing as Andy ran off across the field screaming, and he kept laughing until he had to dab at his good eye with a handkerchief.

I couldn’t face the tree in case it looked back and who knows what would have happened if I got caught in its evil glare, so I turned towards the new bypass. John knew better than to go there, not while they worked on it. We used to mess around there when it was a huge pile of sand and rubble and unattended for days at a time, but he was more sensible than to play in the path of a steamroller.

A rustle came from the edge of the potato plants. Chappie, I called, and the plant stilled. Seconds later, from another part of the crop, Chappie emerged. I kept my eyes on the spot where I’d seen movement. Come on, Chappie. Here, boy! I needed him by my side. Flashes of the morning’s dismembered birds passed through my mind. Whatever got them lurked a few feet away, perhaps ready to feed again. 

Chappie ignored me and sniffed at the tractor wheels. He cocked his leg up at it and whined as he peed.

I backed away from the plants, keeping one eye on them and moved over the tractor. Darting my eyes to the ground, I spotted a flat stone. I ducked, grabbed it